I nodded and moved away, conscious of my sweaty back under his hand. I didn’t want to turn round and see him surreptitiously wiping his palms on his trousers. I started to tell Sam about how grapes grown on the vines were pressed and made into wine but he was more interested in whether they used to shoot arrows from the ramparts and blow up the neighbours with cannonballs.

‘So Beryl, are you going to come down into the cellars with me later and check out some of the wines? They do a fantastic fizz.’

Mum let out a big roar of laughter. ‘That’s an offer I can’t refuse!’

I glanced at Massimo, ready to be embarrassed that Mum read innuendo into everything, but he was laughing along. I was ashamed of wishing that she’d chosen something other than a vest T-shirt, which left the tops of her arms completely exposed, wobbling away with merriment. No doubt Anna would be a vision of maxi dresses and flowing shirts.

‘We probably ought to go down and help Nico. I feel a bit guilty about leaving him to heave all the luggage about.’

Massimo looked at me, his dark eyes teasing. ‘For you, Maggie, I’m sure it will be his pleasure.’

I was old enough to recognise a load of flannel when I heard it. But I was still flattered.

I stepped away from him and hauled open the heavy door leading back downstairs. I beckoned Sam. ‘Come on. Let’s go and find our rooms.’

Massimo scooted in front of Mum. ‘Let me go first, the steps are a bit steep.’

She lumbered down the stairs behind him, her feet spilling off the edges of her sandals. When we unpacked, I’d paint her toenails for her. Massimo offered his hand to help her down the last few steps.

‘Aren’t you just the gent? Anna’s done a good job with you boys.’

At that moment, Anna came clacking into the courtyard in an immaculate white T-shirt and knee-length shorts that would have made me look like I’d escaped from a bowling tournament.

‘Massimo, you need to go and give Lara a hand. Sandro’s seen a lizard and won’t go into his room now.’

Anna managed to put a slight sneer on ‘Sandro’ and ‘Lara’. It was no wonder the poor buggers were gibbering wrecks of underconfidence.

Massimo shrugged in a ‘What can you do?’ sort of way.

‘I’d better go and be the lizard slayer. See you later, ladies.’

31

LARA

I watched Maggie shrugging off Anna’s advice on the journey over. ‘Thanks, Anna, but Sam doesn’t need his jumper. He gets hot really easily’; ‘I’m quite happy for him to play on the iPad for the whole flight’; ‘I know Coke is bad for his teeth but it’s only now and again. Think of it as a service to keeping dentists in business.’

Maggie’s conviction that her way might not be perfect but it was good enough filled me with awe and envy. Anna only had to say ‘scarf’ to me and I bundled up Sandro like an Egyptian mummy. Unlike Maggie I didn’t have a mother to counterbalance Anna’s certainty that I couldn’t cope without her input. As soon as Sandro was born, Anna told anyone who listened, ‘Of course, he’s a demanding baby, very fussy. And Lara’s prone to worrying. It was a difficult pregnancy and I think she’s passed her apprehension onto the little one. Thank goodness Massimo is so hands-on, otherwise I don’t know what she would do.’

I’d felt as though without one of them watching me I’d scald his throat with milk, burn his bottom at bath time, under-or overfeed him. And now, the habit had become ingrained. I could barely make a decision about whether Sandro needed a coat without asking someone else’s opinion.

So when Sandro spotted the lizard, I started to explain he could have the bed furthest from the door, that we’d keep the windows shut, that lizards were friendly, a smaller version of the little creature in How to Train Your Dragon. But of course, Anna, next door, with her laser antennae for ‘Lara not coping’, poked her head out, heard Sandro gathering all his tiny might for full-scale reptilian uproar and, with my words, ‘He’ll be fine in a minute’ bleating uselessly round the courtyard, she charged off to find Massimo.

Which would be the end of cajoling Sandro to do anything.

Massimo came barging in, squatting down in front of Sandro and hissing in his face, careful to keep his voice low so the others couldn’t hear. ‘Don’t you dare start making a fuss about a lizard! A bloody lizard! Have you seen how big they are compared to you? You’ll be making a fuss about an ant next! You need to grow a pair, son. You will not be ruining this holiday by blubbing and whining about every little thing. Will you?’

Sandro shook his head.

‘I can’t hear you. Will you or will you not ruin my holiday by making a fuss about every last thing?’

I pushed down the torrent of fury that had been whirlpooling inside me since Maggie had come round and confirmed my suspicions the night before.

What Massimo did to me wasn’t important any more. But Sandro was another matter. I had to stay strong for him.

I willed him to answer as Massimo pushed his face right up close. Briefly, I eyed the wrought-iron lamp on the bedside table and imagined smashing it down on the back of Massimo’s head, seeing fright in his eyes for a change. For a moment, my hand twitched by my side.

‘No.’ Sandro’s bare little twig a of response seemed to satisfy Massimo. He stood up, that pointing, stabbing forefinger relaxing back into his palm. Then, as though someone else had walked into the room, Massimo swept Sandro off his feet, swung him round and planted a big kiss on his head. ‘Good lad.’

A dart of fear washed across Sandro’s face, subsiding into relief as Massimo put him down again, sending him on his way with a pat on the back. ‘Off you go then. See if you can find where Sam’s got to.’

‘He’ll be all right once he settles in,’ I said, deliberately busying myself with unpacking so I wouldn’t have to look at Massimo, wouldn’t have to monitor the ‘insolence’ on my face. I could feel him moving behind me. My shoulders tensed, my body braced for a jab in the kidneys or a shove into the wall.

He put his chin on my shoulder from behind, kissing my ear. ‘Of course he’ll be fine.’

For a split second, I relaxed, a brief flicker of hope flaring in me. But then he grabbed my wrist, digging in his thumb so hard my fingers went weak. I’d trained myself not to struggle. I let my body go loose, the inside of my wrists didn’t usually bruise easily. I kept my eyes open but unseeing, blanking him out.

‘He’ll be fine because I’m going to take that boy in hand this holiday. I’m not having you mollycoddling him until he’s scared of his own bloody shadow.’

As always, I rebelled silently, clenching my free hand to my side and spilling out a furious argument in my head, congratulating him on bullying Sandro to get the result he wanted, that fantastic tried-and-tested parenting approach. But I couldn’t let that retort come swashbuckling out into the air. Massimo had discovered my Achilles’ heel all right. If I stood up to him, Sandro would get the brunt of it. It wasn’t hard for a forty-five-year-old to get the better of a seven-year-old boy. Or apparently, a thirty-five-year-old woman.

How many times had I been sucked in? No doubt tonight, when we were in bed, he’d stroke my face, work his way slowly on top of me, murmuring some weasly excuse that I had once fallen for, some pathetic version of ‘I’m only like this with Sandro because it would break my heart if people thought you were a bad mother.’

It would just be one among so many other excuses, those impostor sentences posing as love, but in reality nothing but hollow worms of words: ‘I only tell you what to wear because I want everyone to see what a beautiful wife I’ve got.’ ‘What you want matters to me more than anything, it’s just that sometimes I make mistakes about what you want.’

It would only be a short hop from there to trying to convince me he had had sex with Caitlin so he wouldn’t have to bother me when I was so tired all the time.

‘Or some old bollocks’, as Maggie would say.

I’d deliberately avoided getting into conversation about what she’d told me on the journey over. How could I admit – ever – what I knew and still stay with Massimo? She’d just think I was the most pathetic person who walked this planet. And maybe I was, allowing myself to be taken in, Massimo’s will encroaching on me over the years, eroding my sense of self like a winter sea hammering against chalky cliffs.

But I’d wanted to be taken in. I was the one who allowed him to behave like that, smiling for the public photo then smashing the scenery when the lens cap was back on.